


The Admission of Desire

by prairiecrow



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M, Pre-Slash, Seduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-06
Updated: 2012-03-06
Packaged: 2017-11-01 13:48:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The final scene of "The Wire", from Julian's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Admission of Desire

"May I join you?"  
  
He'd been sitting there staring at nothing while he idly twirled his spoon in his pudding, so preoccupied with chewing over the events of the past ten days (and with wondering how he could have been such a damned green fool) that he'd never even noticed that he was being approached. Glancing sharply up, he took in the Cardassian's friendly enquiring expression with somewhat disconcerted surprise.   
  
"Garak?" But in truth he'd been feeling rather lonely too, a state of mind which the spy, with his usual keen decisiveness, both perceived and took advantage of.  
  
"Thank you," Garak said in response to all that Julian hadn't said, and seated himself across from the Human with a little sigh of contentment.  
  
Julian fixed him with a scowling gaze and employed an authoritative tone of voice, which he suspected would do no good whatsoever: "What are you doing up? You're supposed to be in bed!"  
  
"Out of the question," Garak replied with a sweetness that didn't fool Julian — not any more. "I couldn't stand being cooped up in that dreadful Infirmary for another second — and besides, I feel perfectly fine!"   
  
And he looked it, too — energetic, alert, beaming with good humour. But Julian shook his head slightly and glanced down at his dessert, one corner of his mouth wryly twisting upward into a not-quite smile. As unrepentantly deceptive as he knew Garak to be now, it still couldn't be denied that the man had an appealing surface manner: what old Terran law had once termed an "attractive nuisance", likely to lead the unwary into all sorts of trouble. Julian congratulated himself on now being counted among the cognizant, which meant that he should now be immune to Garak's charming dance.  
  
"So!" that bright voice continued cheerfully, drawing his gaze back to Garak's smile again almost against his will, "how's the I'danian spice pudding today?"  
  
The question was so surprising, so…  _commonplace_ , after such remarkable events… that Julian actually looked down at his bowl in disbelief before meeting Garak's eyes more heatedly. "How's the spice pudding?" he mimicked before letting his anger break cover: "Is that all you have to say for yourself?" But he was smiling as he said it, even though he wanted to reach across the table and grab Garak by the shoulders and shake him silly. "How can you just sit there and pretend that the last ten days never happened?"  
  
It was a question he had no real hope of getting an answer for, so at least he wasn't disappointed when Garak offered him only an evasion. "I for one, Doctor, am perfectly satisfied with the way things turned out — and I see no need to dwell on what was doubtlessly a difficult time for both of us."  
  
Cup now in hand, Julian just looked at him for a second: this enigmatic, duplicitous, thoroughly impossible man he'd gone to such extremes to save, this patient he'd risked torture and death for, this "friend" who was giving him nothing in return for his efforts but more pretty words and a smile that revealed no truths. The wave of disappointment darkened his heart, because it brought to the fore something else he'd been considering ever since leaving the Arawath colony:  _I care for him, but has he ever cared for me? Even a little?_  He took a sip of his drink, glad for an excuse to take his attention away from Garak's smug expression for a moment, even though he knew he'd soon be gazing again, devouring every crumb he was offered. When had he become the one with an addiction? At least Garak was finally free of his…  
  
"By the way," Garak interjected, bringing him back on point, "I just had the most interesting conversation with Constable Odo. It seems he's under the impression that I was a member of the Obsidian Order!"  
  
The dramatic sidelong glances, as if wary that the Order was surveilling their conversation at that moment, amused Julian in spite of himself. "And what did you tell him?" he asked, cradling the cup in front of him as if it could form a barrier against whatever influence Garak was sending in his direction.  
  
"That he was mistaken, of course." But the look Garak was giving him — chin lowered, blue eyes gleaming almost coquettishly under grey brow ridges — spoke volumes in an entirely different language.  
  
"And he believed you?" Julian stepped willingly into the pattern of their old game: what point was there in resisting? Especially now that Garak, having displayed a side of himself that Julian doubted many people had ever seen, might well be considering putting some distance between them in the future. If this was to be their last real conversation, best that it be a good one to go out on, as much as the thought pained him to contemplate.  
  
"Oh, he said something about 'keeping a closer eye on me in the future' — I told him be my guest, I have nothing to hide." Still smiling, still animated — and more than merely animated, in a way that made Julian's heart rate take a little leap upward. There was warmth and heat there, veiled but communicated in the tilt of that sleek head and the playful flash of his glances: Julian had seen it from him before, but never so blatantly presented. If Garak had been Human, Julian wouldn't have hesitated to say that he was flirting, but of course with an alien species the signals could so easily get crossed…  
  
"Here." His voice fell to a deeper murmur, his gaze still coy, as he slipped something across the tabletop toward Julian's left hand. "I've brought you something."  
  
Now  _that_  was pretty damned clear, and in the amplification of the signal Julian recognized that perhaps the previous instances he'd noticed over the past year hadn't been artifacts of transmission between two differing systems of reference. He reached for the red data rod and picked it up to briefly study it, knowing that accepting such a gift sent a clear message in itself. "What is it?"  
  
" _Meditations on a Crimson Shadow_  by Preloc." Yes, definitely a new note in that musical voice: sultry, almost caressing. Evidently Garak's intentions didn't lie in the direction of cutting off contact after all.  
  
For the first time in over a week, Julian felt the tension completely drain from his shoulders — well, almost completely, it had been replaced by a thrill of excitement and anticipation, and more than a trace of apprehension. He still wasn't sure exactly what Garak had been, or was, but when he lifted the data rod slightly and smiled again, and asked: "More Cardassian literature?", he knew that what he was really querying and acknowledging was far more than the mere words conveyed. It felt a little like stepping into a grassy moonlit clearing where he knew a tiger was lurking and stripping off all protection:  _See? I'm baring my throat and my belly to you. Come closer, and let me feel your claws._  
  
"I think you'll find this one more to your taste." There were at least two levels of meaning to that simple statement, Julian was sure. Garak leaned a little closer, the intensity of his gaze never wavering. "It takes place in the future, during a time when Cardassia and the Klingon Empire are at war."  
  
"Who wins?" Julian asked, already suspecting the answer.  
  
Oh, this time Garak's smile and throaty purr were pure seduction, the reflection of a white moon in amber eyes. "Who do you think?"  
  
 _So you want to be on top, do you?_  And while that prospect was making every inch of Julian's skin burn inside his uniform, he knew things wouldn't — and couldn't — be that simple. It wasn't in either of their natures. "Never mind," he said quickly, "don't tell me. I don't want you to spoil the ending."  
  
He'd never heard Garak laugh quite like that before, soft and rich and evidently full of real enjoyment. He decided he could certainly get used to it… but before they moved on to what they hadn't just talked about, there were things Julian needed to determine. He put aside the data rod and loosely clasped his hands in front of him, signalling (he hoped) determination to underscore the gentle tone of the asking and the directness of his gaze: "You know, I still have a lot of questions to ask you about your past."  
  
Smooth blankness, leavened by a trace of a friendly smile, effortlessly replaced flirtatiousness. "I've given you all the answers I'm capable of."  
  
"You've given me answers, all right," Julian conceded with a slight smile of his own, "but they were all different. What I want to know is, out of all the stories you've told me, which ones were true and which ones weren't?"  
  
"My dear Doctor," and he leaned nearer again with an air of sincerity that was oddly convincing, "they're  _all_  true."  
  
Exasperated, but not really surprised, Julian sighed and sat back a little to fix Garak with a skeptical look. "Even the lies?"  
  
Swift as a chameleon, Garak changed again, from protective mask to provocative smoulder. "Especially the lies," he clarified, offering each word like a gift and wrapping them up with a smile of such manifest pleasure that Julian couldn't help but respond in kind in spite of the way his own pulse kept distracting him, warming his lips and his fingertips and parts considerably further south with eager expectation. In less than two and a half minutes the dangerous territory between them had shifted into something even more wondrously strange, and he was mildly amazed to discover that the combination of ambiguity and mystery and half-glimpsed truths, which had drawn him into Garak's orbit and held him there for so long, was now only perfected by the admission of desire.   
  
THE END


End file.
